And so, this is the second time in a year or 2 that this has happened on my DV8P (with Win8.1): something is eating up all my storage space on the device (an external microSD card in the tablet's microSD card slot is fine/not affected), to the point that ALL the original 32GB space is gone and the tablet now routinely malfunctions, as a result.

The last time this happened, I researched the issue extensively. I found a bunch of potential Windows system culprits and fixed them, to no avail. I also spoke with both Microsoft and Dell customer support, and they had no idea of what could be causing the issue. My system now, as then, appears to be virus-free, and I don't have "exotic" software installed.

It's very odd: if I make additional space available on the tablet (by deleting stored files or software, or by running a Windows system clean-up), the system literally gobbles it up within a few hours or even minutes, without my touching the tablet--you can watch the space disappear. And then I'm back to the same situation as before. It feels as if something in Windows grabs the space for its operations--but I can't find the culprit.

The only "solution" recommended to me before by Dell, which I ultimately used, was to restore the tablet back to its factory clean settings. But, of course, that means having to start again from square 1, reinstalling software, getting settings back to what I like (we forget how many small tweaks we make to our systems!), etc. I'd like to avoid having to do that again, and so thought I'd post here first to see if anyone else has gone through this and/or what suggestions anyone might have.

Thanks, in advance.